Nonprofit groups and businesses have different goals and cultures, so it’s crucial for charities to carefully think through any partnerships with businesses and clearly establish ownership rights before taking any action, reports The Financial Times.

The article gives a few examples of partnerships turned ugly, including the One Laptop Per Child program, which aimed to supply cheap computers to children in poor countries. Intel, the company helping to produce the laptops, pulled out and started its own venture, which angered the founder of the One Laptop effort.

Other partnerships have been mutually beneficial, though, including a program to spread cellphones in Africa that turned out to be quite profitable for the corporation involved, Vodafone. The article suggests that such partnerships succeeded because both sides clearly laid out their goals and because they sorted through intellectual-property issues beforehand to avoid entanglements later.

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